The
International Institute for Management Development (IMD) has done it again. The
Lausanne, Switzerland-based school held on to its 2012 lead for the top
executive education program in The Financial Times’ 2013 rankings published
earlier this week.

IESE Business
School in Spain jumped two spots to claim second, while Harvard Business School
fell two rungs to fourth, despite topping every school for the quality of
teaching and for placing second in “aims achieved” by program participants.

The
Thunderbird School of Global Management held steady and kept its third-place
ranking. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business rounded out the
top five by moving up one place from sixth last year.

The Financial Times’ list rates the top 70 providers of
non-degree business programs for executive-level professionals. Participating
schools must have raked in at least $2 million in revenue last year to even be
considered. The ranking puts the most weight on a participant survey, where
attendees use a 10-point scale to evaluate everything from the quality of
teaching to the probability of future use.

At least 20 percent of a program’s
participants must answer the survey for the school to make the list. The
results comprise 80% of the ranking – school data is used to determine the
remaining 20%.

How credible
is this ranking? Any survey that puts Thunderbird ahead of such highly regarded
business schools, such as Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and Chicago Booth
justifiably raises eyebrows. After all, most participants would cherish a
program certificate on their resume from Harvard or Wharton much more than one
from Thunderbird, despite the school’s superior showing in the FT ranking.

And
because surveys of participants are very much based on how a school measured up
to expectations, the ranking is largely a reflection of how a group of
graduates felt expectations were met or exceeded by their school. It’s not a
stretch to believe that Thunderbird participants had expectations that were not
quite as high as those as Harvard or Wharton.

Whatever one
thinks of the authority of this ranking, it does yield some interesting data.
Which schools serve up the best food to their executive education participants?
According to the FT, it’s the Stanford Graduate School of Business, followed by
Chicago Booth, Wharton, the University of Virginia’s Darden School, and No. 5
Harvard. So much for superior European cuisine.

And when it came to facilities,
IMD took top honors for the best learning environment, just ahead of some very
surprising winners including No. 2 Washington University’s Olin School, No. 3
Darden, No. 4 European School of Management and Technology, and No. 5 IESE
Business School in Spain.

More
substantively, depending on your point of view, the best teaching faculty in
executive education after Harvard is No. 2 INSEAD, followed by No. 3. Chicago
Booth, No. 4 IMD, and No. 5 University of Toronto’s Rotman School of
Management. Darden, generally known as having the best teaching faculty in MBA
education, was sixth, according to the FT survey data. And when it came to
judging the caliber of one’s classmates, survey respondents were most pleased
with the quality of their fellow students at Stanford, Harvard, IMD, INSEAD and
Wharton.